I'm considering buying this older kevlar canoe, you can see it has bulky skid plates. Should I be concerned that they are hiding damage underneath? I'd like the surface to be smooth and those edges look pretty rough, should they be left on or removed? I have no experience with this so all advice is welcome.

i doubt they are hiding damage. The hull looks pretty pristine. If there was damage there would be other scrapes and gouges on the bottom.

They are bulky and poorly installed. All that puckering! However, they are kevlar felt skid plates and kevlar is very hard to sand or grind. It basically fuzzes up when you sand it. You never actually remove material, it just gets fuzzier.

They are bomb proof skid plates and will serve you well landing on rocky shores. However, if you don't like them, don't buy the boat.

I have removed this type of skid plate from several canoes without much trouble. But it was always from Polyethylene or Royalex canoes. I wouldn't think removal from this canoe would very difficult.

I would recommend keeping the skid plates on, After your first trip you’ll be glad you did!

If the skid plate are made using Kevlar felt they are can be sanded. I have reshaped poorly installed skid plates. They didn’t fuzz up for me like woven Kevlar does.

Carl

It's a shoddy install job for sure but they are not hiding damage. I would just leave them on. You'll never know they're there when its in the water. When I bought my last canoe (Swift prospector) they mistakenly put skid plates on it. Like you I wanted the canoe hull to be smooth so I was worried I wouldn't like them but turns out I love them.

Those skid plates can be sanded. I would use a 1/4 sheet palm sander with 80 grit to start and be very careful on edges the near kevlar. The putty knife trick explained below can used when using the sander, just use a wider knife.

Here is the trick to getting the skid plate edges to blend better into the canoe.

Get yourself a dremel tool and put a sanding drum on, but let an 1/8" or so of the sanding drum stick up from the top. Now get a putty knife push it against the edge of the skid plate where you are sanding to protect the canoe's kevlar and slowly create a new blended bevel on the skid plate.

You will want put a couple nice coats of epoxy on the skid plates after you are done.

Many people don't realize that you can mix some craft store acrylic paint into your epoxy to color your skid plates, make sure you don't make it too thick of a mix. Two thin coats are better than one thick one. Just tape off the edges of the skid plate.

I bet you could find a paint that would match your canoe and make those skid plates disappear or use black to jazz it up.

Thank you all, I've learned so much from your help. The seller originally said the boat was around 30 lbs, but later he corrected that to 45 lbs. That is heavier than I want so I passed. Your advice will be helpful going forward with my search.